There are no coronations in America. ~Sen. Sam Brownback

If he thinks this, I’m afraid the good Senator has not been paying much attention to the Republican nominating process for, oh, the last forty years.  In this instance, I wish he were right.  I hope that people in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida do not respond to barrages of advertising and the cheap, lazy rhetoric of fearmongering that Romney offers.  (This would be to hope for something quite unusual.)  It would be outstanding to have a thoroughly competitive nominating process.  It would be fascinating to see what happens when each of the media-crowned top three does not get to have twice as much time in every debate as each of his competitors.  It would be intriguing to see what having qualified, representative, principled candidates leading the field is like.  I can barely remember the last time the GOP had a nominee who possessed all three of these traits. 

Instead, as we can all see, the GOP doesn’t have any of that.  It has the unqualified (Giuliani), the unrepresentative (McCain) and the unprincipled (you know who) leading the way.  Unless someone upends Romney at Ames or at least makes a big splash (better than 25%), the GOP will have a coronation of someone as it pretty much always does.